CHAPTER XX
THE DREAMER ON THE REEF
“I wonder where Paddy is?” cried Dick next morning. He was coming outof the chapparel pulling a dead branch after him. “He’s left his coaton the sand, and the tinder box in it, so I’ll make the fire. There’sno use waiting. I want my breakfast. Bother——”
He trod the dead stick with his naked feet, breaking it into pieces.
Emmeline sat on the sand and watched him.
Emmeline had two gods of a sort: Paddy Button and Dick. Paddy wasalmost an esoteric god wrapped in the fumes of tobacco and mystery. Thegod of rolling ships and creaking masts—the masts and vast sail spacesof the _Northumberland_ were an enduring vision in her mind—the deitywho had lifted her from a little boat into this marvellous place, wherethe birds were coloured and the fish were painted, where life was neverdull, and the skies scarcely ever grey.
Dick, the other deity, was a much more understandable personage, but noless admirable, as a companion and protector. In the two years and fivemonths of island life he had grown nearly three inches. He was asstrong as a boy of twelve, and could scull the boat almost as well asPaddy himself, and light a fire. Indeed, during the last few months MrButton, engaged in resting his bones, and contemplating rum as anabstract idea, had left the cooking and fishing and general gatheringof food as much as possible to Dick.
“It amuses the craythur to pritind he’s doing things,” he would say,as he watched Dick delving in the earth to make a littleoven—island-fashion—for the cooking of fish or what not.
“Come along, Em,” said Dick, piling the broken wood on top of somerotten hibiscus sticks; “give me the tinder box.”
He got a spark on to a bit of punk, and then he blew at it, looking notunlike Æolus as represented on those old Dutch charts that smell ofschiedam and snuff, and give one mermaids and angels instead ofsoundings.
The fire was soon sparkling and crackling, and he heaped on sticks inprofusion, for there was plenty of fuel, and he wanted to cookbreadfruit.
The breadfruit varies in size, according to age, and in colouraccording to season. These that Dick was preparing to cook were aslarge as small melons. Two would be more than enough for three people’sbreakfast. They were green and knobbly on the outside, and theysuggested to the mind unripe lemons, rather than bread.
He put them in the embers, just as you put potatoes to roast, andpresently they sizzled and spat little venomous jets of steam, thenthey cracked, and the white inner substance became visible. He cutthem open and took the core out—the core is not fit to eat—and theywere ready.
Meanwhile, Emmeline, under his directions, had not been idle.
There were in the lagoon—there are in several other tropical lagoons Iknow of—a fish which I can only describe as a golden herring. A bronzeherring it looks when landed, but when swimming away down against thebackground of coral brains and white sand patches, it has the sheen ofburnished gold. It is as good to eat as to look at, and Emmeline wascarefully toasting several of them on a piece of cane.
The juice of the fish kept the cane from charring, though there wereaccidents at times, when a whole fish would go into the fire, amidstshouts of derision from Dick.
She made a pretty enough picture as she knelt, the “skirt” round thewaist looking not unlike a striped bath-towel, her small face intent,and filled with the seriousness of the job on hand, and her lipspuckered out at the heat of the fire.
“It’s so hot!” she cried in self-defence, after the first of theaccidents.
“Of course it’s hot,” said Dick, “if you stick to looward of the fire.How often has Paddy told you to keep to windward of it!”
“I don’t know which is which,” confessed the unfortunate Emmeline, whowas an absolute failure at everything practical: who could neither rownor fish, nor throw a stone, and who, though they had now been on theisland twenty-eight months or so, could not even swim.
“You mean to say,” said Dick, “that you don’t know where the wind comesfrom?”
“Yes, I know that.”
“Well, that’s to windward.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Well, you know it now.”
“Yes, I know it now.”
“Well, then, come to windward of the fire. Why didn’t you ask themeaning of it before?”
“I did,” said Emmeline; “I asked Mr Button one day, and he told me alot about it. He said if he was to spit to windward and a person was tostand to loo’ard of him, he’d be a fool; and he said if a ship went toomuch to loo’ard she went on the rocks, but I didn’t understand what hemeant. Dicky, I wonder where he is?”
“Paddy!” cried Dick, pausing in the act of splitting open a breadfruit.Echoes came from amidst the cocoa-nut trees, but nothing more.
“Come on,” said Dick; “I’m not going to wait for him. He may have goneto fetch up the night lines”—they sometimes put down night lines inthe lagoon—“and fallen asleep over them.”
Now, though Emmeline honoured Mr Button as a minor deity, Dick had noillusions at all upon the matter. He admired Paddy because he couldknot, and splice, and climb a cocoa-nut tree, and exercise his sailorcraft in other admirable ways, but he felt the old man’s limitations.They ought to have had potatoes now, but they had eaten both potatoesand the possibility of potatoes when they consumed the contents of thathalf sack. Young as he was, Dick felt the absolute thriftlessness ofthis proceeding. Emmeline did not; she never thought of potatoes,though she could have told you the colour of all the birds on theisland.
Then, again, the house wanted rebuilding, and Mr Button said every dayhe would set about seeing after it to-morrow, and on the morrow itwould be to-morrow. The necessities of the life they led were astimulus to the daring and active mind of the boy; but he was alwaysbeing checked by the go-as-you-please methods of his elder. Dick cameof the people who make sewing machines and typewriters. Mr Button cameof a people notable for ballads, tender hearts, and potheen. That wasthe main difference.
“Paddy!” again cried the boy, when he had eaten as much as he wanted.“Hullo! where are you?”
They listened, but no answer came. A bright-hued bird flew across thesand space, a lizard scuttled across the glistening sand, the reefspoke, and the wind in the tree-tops; but Mr Button made no reply.
“Wait,” said Dick.
He ran through the grove towards the aoa where the dinghy was moored;then he returned.
“The dinghy is all right,” he said. “Where on earth can he be?”
“I don’t know,” said Emmeline, upon whose heart a feeling of lonelinesshad fallen.
“Let’s go up the hill,” said Dick; “perhaps we’ll find him there.”
They went uphill through the wood, past the water-course. Every now andthen Dick would call out, and echoes would answer—there were quaint,moist-voiced echoes amidst the trees—or a bevy of birds would takeflight. The little waterfall gurgled and whispered, and the greatbanana leaves spread their shade.
“Come on,” said Dick, when he had called again without receiving areply.
They found the hill-top, and the great boulder stood casting its shadowin the sun. The morning breeze was blowing, the sea sparkling, the reefflashing, the foliage of the island waving in the wind like the flamesof a green-flamed torch. A deep swell was spreading itself across thebosom of the Pacific. Some hurricane away beyond the Navigators orGilberts had sent this message and was finding its echo here, athousand miles away, in the deeper thunder of the reef.
Nowhere else in the world could you get such a picture, such acombination of splendour and summer, such a vision of freshness andstrength, and the delight of morning. It was the smallness of theisland, perhaps, that closed the charm and made it perfect. Just abunch of foliage and flowers set in the midst of the blowing wind andsparkling blue.
Suddenly Dick, standing beside Emmeline on the rock, pointed with hisfinger to the reef near the opening.
“There he is!” cried he.